1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a child-resistant lighter, and in particular to an automatically locking child-resistant lighter.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional lighter generally comprises a fuel tank having a fuel tank cover, a valve for controllably releasing fuel from the tank, a spark wheel and flint for generating a spark to ignite released fuel, and a lever for opening and closing the valve. The spark wheel, flint, lever and valve are conveniently arranged on the tank cover so that a user can readily rotate the spark wheel and pivot the lever to open the valve and reliably effect the release and ignition of fuel. A child-resistant lockable lighter is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,439,375, issued Aug. 8, 1995 to Zhengge Wang, in which the lever is capable of sliding between a locked position, in which the lever is prevented from pivoting and the lighter is thereby rendered inoperative, and a released position, in which the lever is capable of its normal pivoting action to open the fuel valve. In use, the lever is first manually pulled from the locked position to the released position. At this stage, the lighter can be used normally. Following use, the lever is manually pushed back to its locked position to again render the lighter inoperative. Using this arrangement, the lever can be so designed that the force required to move the lever back and forth is greater than that which can be exerted by a child, thereby rendering the lighter child resistant.
A drawback of the above described invention is that the lever must be manually pulled into the released position and then manually pushed back to the locked position. These additional steps are inconvenient, so that a user may simply keep the lever in the released position, thereby maintaining the lighter permanently in an operative condition, and defeating the child resistant and safety features afforded by the locking position of the lever.